Filtering the Methodology of Illustory

I try out my first attempt of communicating my project on my supervisor Jacqueline Gothe. It’s intense to find how different it is verbalising your concept as opposed to mind-mapping it. The first question put forward was how exactly does illustration enable an audience to stand proxy to a historical experience? What does it mean for the audience to stand proxy to a historical experience? What is the role of a historian? What is my role?

This directive of the project is on a different trajectory to a project that is essentially telling history through Illustory. Another question posed was whether my focus is on the process of applying an aesthetic to historiography? Or is it a visual translation specifically of Mayumi Itoh’s book?

Suggesting that the audience is proxy to a historical experience, I am also trying to enable them to make an interpretation based on the illustrations. What is the motive of this process of enabling? I suggested that it allows them to account for the significance of the history visualised. Yet where I fell short in my methodology is understanding the visualisation of history through illustration is purely a projection of my interpretation of a historical narrative; and it is rather me facilitating that perspective to an audience as opposed to enabling them a perspective.

I imagined the illustrations to be ambiguous (meaning abstract and expressive) and have an aesthetic of openness to allow that audience interpretation. But then that is not the directive of history nor the ethos of a historian. So realistically there should be clarity and structure. But there is still room for expression, but maybe not communicated as ‘ambiguous’. I’ll know how to frame the illustrations when I start the creative process. So if these illustrations were to enable that proxy role; the project would require the audience to gather evidence, interpret, discern a perspective, formulate a narrative structure and essentially story-tell; as a historian would do. Yet for me, for this time-frame at least, I would prefer the illustrations to be my visual translation of a historical narrative. I’m facilitating an aesthetic to an audience.

There are still more questions to address. And even more questions to raise. But this is opening up a discourse to discern what exactly I want out of this project and what I expect this project to do.